Written on January 13, 2010 by Tom Stine
Previously I’ve written about the lack of real control that we have in our lives (see No Control, No Control, No Control and Who Is in Control? and many others). To properly discuss control, however, requires a bit more to be said on the subject than I’ve said in the past. In this article I’m going to attempt to provide some clarity on a somewhat confusing topic.
I think control is confusing and also quite problematic for most people because of the essential issue confronting everyone (and by everyone I mean everyone, not just spiritual seekers). That essential issue is the answer to the question, “What are you?” That’s the key to the whole control question. If you are convinced that you are the little human body with a little human brain, then I think I can safely say that you have virtually no control over your life.
I say virtually no control because there is no doubt that the human mind has some sort of influence on how the body functions and moves through life, so there is a semblance of control. But even then, this influence is nothing more than that: influence. But control? Forget about it! The amount of control that the human mind has over the events, actions, decisions and details of a human life is laughable at best.
I know that many of you have watched The Secret. For that matter, you’ve grown up in a either a western or a westernized culture with it’s emphasis on self-determination, hard work, and “going for broke.” You’ve been taught over and over again that if you simple dig in and try harder, exercise your will, your inner strength, etc., you can make anything happen. But I’m sorry to tell you that every bit of that is a farce, a deception, a belief system that has no resemblance to actual experience.
First of all, you have no control over your thoughts. You can’t decide what you are going to think. If you will sit for even a moment and watch, your thoughts simply arise and then fade of their own accord. They are based upon your experience, your conditioning, the sum total of your life. Even better, notice how irrelevant they are 99% of the time to what you are experiencing right now.
At this moment, you are reading this article on control. If you pause, close your eyes, and watch your thoughts for a few minutes, notice what will come: the guy you met last weekend at a party, the bill that is due next week, the dog you saw running on the beach, the fact that it is 0 degrees outside (although it is toasty warm inside). But none of that is what is happening right here and right now. Thoughts arise, thoughts fade, and there really is no controlling what you are going to be thinking from moment to moment.
Secondly, let’s get real for a moment: even if you could control your thoughts, do you honestly think that your mind can manipulate external reality and cause new cars, new houses, new jobs and new women (and/or men) to enter your life? Just because you “held a thought” in your awareness for a few minutes each day? Now don’t misunderstand, I’m talking about “your mind”, that little hunk of energy that contains the thoughts specific to the body called Tom or Bob or Sue or Helen, the thoughts that are tied to the brain and nervous system of that body. Does that have control over new houses, new cars, etc.? Influence, sure, but control? Control? Real honest to God control? Okay, didn’t think so.
As an aside: I know that I’m not going to make a lot of spiritual and new-age people happy with the above. Oh, well. Someday I’ll write more about the effect of mind on experience. There certainly is some sort of process going on, something that sort of looks like the mind giving rise to our experience, something that seems like a “Law of Attraction” or something similar. But the key point above is this: that little bit of energy you call “my mind” isn’t the force driving your life and experience. My advice: give up trying to manipulate Life and to attract goodies into your experience. It isn’t going to work the way the Secret folks would have you believe.
Okay, so at the level of the seeming separate human being, governed by his thoughts and residing in a body with a brain and nervous system, there is no control over life. It is a fantasy at best. But, thank God for you and me, that little human body and brain has nothing to do with what you really are. What you are is none of that. The human body and brain are contained within what you are. That human body and brain are simply part of your experience in the manifest world.
So, what are you? You are Life itself. We use many fancy words in spirituality to attempt to describe what you are, words like Consciousness, Life, God, Awareness, Awakeness, The Now, Presence, Brahman, you name it. All just words attempting to get a grip on what it is that you are. But they point to something far larger, far more immense, and most assuredly more powerful than the mere human being you have come to think you are.
Let me bring back a diagram I used in a previous post:
What’s looking out of your eyes, what you really, truly are is the Void at the top of the diagram. You are the very source of awareness and consciousness, and as these you experience a Universe or maybe even many universes. All that you see, all that you hear, all that you taste and touch and smell, all this arises out of what you truly are. Everything in the manifest world, everything around you, is you!
So, from the only level that really matters, the level of Consciousness, of Life, it is quite pointless to discuss control. In a certain sense, you could say that you have complete and total control over everything. But that isn’t really the right way to phrase it, because that implies that there even is such a thing as control. Control is just an idea, a concept, that minds create. But in the reality of what you are, there is nothing to control.
Look at the dictionary definition of the word control:
Control: to exercise restraint or direction over; dominate; command.
The very word control implies manipulation, an attempt to change things so that they will be “better” in some sense. But look at the reality of life: everything, everything, everything is Life, is coming out of the unmanifest, the state of pure potential, spirit. It is all arising not by accident, not by some grand cosmic mistake. It is arising from the very substance of what life is. How can there be a mistake anywhere? How can there be a single, solitary thing that Life wants to change right now within its creation? Or to ask it another way, what would God want to change in His creation at this particular moment?
All is as it is. Right now. Perfect. Whole. Complete. Part of awakening is the recognition of this unalterable fact. The very idea of awakening would indicate that this recognition is so. You are awakening to what you are. You are coming into a full, complete understanding of what you are and everything else is. You see everyone and everything as this whole, full and complete.
And finally, I think that many people get the notion that somehow there will be some sort of perfected, absolute, ultimate blissful state at the end of the spiritual path, a state where nothing changes. Well, it may or may not end up being blissful, but it will certainly not be unchanging. While everything may be perfect right now, that doesn’t mean it won’t change into yet another form of perfection. Change is what makes us believe there is time, for change is always occurring. Always change.
There is a much better way to live life. I will write more about this topic later, but suffice it to say it involves that interesting word flow. Spiritual people are always paying lip service to the notion of “going with the flow,” but wanting to control is the exact opposite. There is a movement to life, a flow, and if you relax into it, cooperate with it, this flow can flower and blossom in your experience. It’s called miraculous for a very good reason!
So drop trying to control what you never could and never will control. You’ll be infinitely happier for doing so.
Written on February 9, 2009 by Tom Stine
I finished another 5 day silent retreat with Adyashanti on Friday, and from that retreat came something new: an intense desire to see everything clearly. I want to know, really know, what is real. Clear seeing seems, at this point in my journey, to be the most important thing in the Universe. Nothing matters but the clarity of my vision.
What do I mean by clear seeing? That’s kind of hard to describe. At this point, the best I can do is say that clear seeing is perceiving the world, life, self, everything, with the purest of sight. Only what is true seems to matter. Anything that I don’t know for absolute certainty must go. Basically, all beliefs are not wanting to be believed. Clear seeing appears to be freedom.
I’ll have more to say about my retreat, my experiences, this blog, you name it, in the near future. For now, I wanted to share the above as I sit here at San Jose International Airport enjoying American Airlines postponing my flight. Ain’t life a trip? Seriously, it’s a blast.
Be well, my friends. More soon. Namaste.
Written on August 27, 2008 by Tom Stine
What if all suffering is born from one thought, one idea: the thought “I am separate from everyone and everything?” Then the cure for all suffering would be simply to drop this belief. Sounds so easy, doesn’t it? Drop one thought, one idea, and you are free forever.
But what does that mean, drop this one thought that I am separate from everyone and everything? That would be dropping the belief that I am me. There really isn’t any way that I can pretend to myself or others that Tom is one with everything. I mean, Tom inhabits a body, thinks thoughts about himself, spends large amounts of time fixated upon the thoughts, feelings and beliefs that seem to make him the center of the Universe. No, Tom is very much separate.
So, the only way to drop the idea of being separate is drop the belief that I am Tom. To drop the identification of Tom as the reality of that which is typing these words. Is the typist, in fact, Tom? Is there anyone actually doing the typing? It is in asking questions such as these that it is possible to get a glimpse of our true nature. When we drop the identification with our “selves” and drop the identification as the one who does things, then we can rest as that which is real. That which is true. That which is truth.
The truth is given many names: spirit, God, presence, awareness, beingness, consciousness, the Universe, etc. Awareness or Love are my two favorites. I can really connect with these terms. Awareness is that which looks out my eyes, and love is that which looks out of my heart. Both of these work for me.
Awareness is that which connects me the quickest to an experience of this sense of oneness, this existence beyond the notion of my separate self. I find that placing my focus upon awareness itself, turning my attention inward and looking at awareness as it is, creates a tremendous sense of openness. It creates a space from which lots of goodness flows. It opens “me” to greater peace. And that is a wonderful thing.
It seems to me that all problems are completely resolved in this experience. In this stillness. In this presence or awareness. Being still, resting in reality, feels like the ultimate answer. We shall see.
Written on June 13, 2008 by Tom Stine
When I ride on a roller coaster, I love to ride in the front seat. Everything seems to happen right now when you sit in the front. I put my arms up, of course, no holding on, no matter what the coaster does. Upside down, slammed to the side, you name it. It’s just more fun to be on the leading edge of the experience, arms up, come what may.
I realized recently that this same attitude is very important to take with life in general. Especially with thoughts and feelings. We usually “ride” our thoughts and feelings, especially our unpleasant feelings, in the back seat, as far from the leading edge as possible. We hope that the unpleasant ones will simply go away, and if we sit far enough away from them, maybe they will. But they never do. All feelings will keep returning until they are experienced fully.
More and more I’ve had the experience of moving to the front seat and experiencing most of my feelings and thoughts head on. While I can feel everything more powerfully, and some things seem a little more frightening, the whole experience feels more alive and interesting. It feels almost invigorating. I feel like I’m on the leading edge of my life, and it feels good.
In many senses, being on the leading edge is what awakening is all about. We wake-up from riding on a roller coaster with our eyes closed, holding on for dear life, sure we are going to die a horrible death. And we awaken to the realization that the sun is out, the coaster is flying 90 miles per hour, we are strapped in and loving the ride, moment to moment, in the front seat.
The leading edge. That sums it up. We are like surfers, riding the leading edge of the wave, hanging out on the front side. We may always be in the Now as Eckhart Tolle would say, but we can either live it hanging off the back end or riding the leading edge, wind in our faces, hair blowing, shouting, “Yeah baby!”
Written on February 21, 2008 by Tom Stine
My good friend, Matt, sent me the following the other day:
Ultimately…it’s not the stories that determine our choices, but the stories that we continue to choose. —Sylvia Boorstein
The timing of Matt’s email couldn’t have been more perfect. I have been thinking a lot about the past, and the above fits well. As this statement aludes to, the past that we remember as occasional thoughts and stories that we tell ourselves and others, does not have a dramatic impact upon our current lives. It is the past that we remember over and over again that influences our present experience.
When anything occurs, it always happens now. In this instant. And just as quickly, it is gone. Even if it is an event that takes place over an hour, a day, a month or a year, every aspect of it occurred in just one instant, an instant which is over. Ultimately, then, every bit of the events of our lives, and thus all the details of our stories, ends up in the past as nothing more than a memory. And there is the biggest tragedy and greatest hope with regard to our past.
As Sylvia Boorstein indicates, we keep choosing to remember certain of our stories, and we then define ourselves by the details of these stories. For instance, I graduated from college, and therefore I have a rather large memory, filled with multiple events and details, that I have carried around with me and used to define who and what I am: I am a college graduate. But in fact, isn’t my experience of having gone to college just a memory? How can I even really know for sure that all the things that I think happened to me during college every really occurred? I can’t. All I can say is that I remember them.
While graduating from college is a fairly innocuous example, we can quickly imagine a whole host of stories that would be far more dramatic and, for almost everyone, far more influential upon their present lives. For instance, if I had dropped-out of college because I had a problem with drugs or alcohol, I could easily be carrying that story around with me today as a large limiting belief that makes my life difficult. But, upon reflection, it seems valid to ask whether an event that occurred 2 or 10 or 20 or 40 years ago really means anything in terms of the present time. Almost everyone would answer yes, but I think the better answer might be no.
Given the fact that the past is gone, that it no longer exists, then we have a chance to experience some real freedom from what we thought were the stories that defined who and what we are. We can start with the obvious truth: the past is unreal. It is at a minimum gone, done, finished. In a very real sense, though, we can say that it was never real. Only what I am experiencing in this moment has any reality, if we are honest about it. My high school graduation is just a collection of faded memories. Can I say it even really occurred? Even if you show me a photo of the event, does it really make it real? No. It is only my memories that tell me that I walked across a stage, received a diploma, went to a party afterwards, etc. But it can’t say for sure whether I did it because I am not now doing it.
All of this must mean, then, that at this moment, we are all free of our pasts. Our pasts do not exist. Our stories are just that, stories, that are not real. And without them, we are free to do and create anything we choose without limitations based upon our past. We are free, truly free (and we always were).
